When Jackie Pleasant and her husband were moving from New York to Seattle 26 years ago, friends advised them to live on Capitol Hill.

"They told us it would afford us the lifestyle we had in New York City, but without the hassle," Pleasant recalled. "They did us a great favor."

They have loved Capitol Hill for its ease of transportation, its parks and recreational offerings, its accessibility to theaters, restaurants and cultural venues, its convenience, its diversity, its variety of churches and schools, its proximity to downtown Seattle.

Along with those advantages comes a noteworthy level of affluence. The 98112 ZIP code -- which covers part of Capitol Hill and Montlake, as well as Madison Park, Washington Park and the gated enclave of Broadmoor -- is the 12th wealthiest among the 218 ZIPs in the Puget Sound region.

The ZIP code embraces 9,399 households in the area bounded by Lake Washington on the east, Denny Way on the south, 13th Avenue on the west and State Route 520 on the north. As one of Seattle's oldest residential neighborhoods, it has mansions and apartments, condos and bungalows, old wealth and new.

"There's an urban feel, but also a strong sense of neighborhood and community," Pleasant said. "There's a youthful spirit, even though there are lots of people in their 90s who've lived their whole lives here."

And with their average age a hair under 40, the residents of 98112 are younger than those in many ZIP codes with so much wealth.

Neither Pleasant nor her husband had a driver's license when they moved to Seattle. Living on Capitol Hill made it easy to get by without a car for years, said Pleasant, now a real estate agent with Windermere. "We never felt we were lacking anything. Everything is so convenient."

That's an important factor that makes families want to stay.

Shelley Diamond grew up on Capitol Hill and lived in one house until she was 9, when her parents moved to a bigger house just four blocks away.

"It was a very Capitol Hill thing to do," said Diamond, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Bain. People love the area, but they want a bigger house, so they might buy just down the street.

"The homes are stunning, and every one is different. People are crazy for the craftsman style homes," she said. "And because people don't move very often, when a home comes on the market, it's craziness," with multiple offers in a short period of time.

Buyers in the 98112 ZIP code tend to be moving up, rather than moving in.

"Prices are going up, inventory is still up, and there are still a ton of buyers," said Robert Fox, broker of the Lakeside branch of John L Scott Real Estate.

Madison Park always draws particular interest, Fox said, because it's like a small town within a large city and offers lots of amenities.

"People like it because they're out of the mainstream," he said, "in their own private enclave."

Madison Street is the only one in Seattle that runs from water to water -- from Lake Washington to Elliott Bay.

That's something Lisa Taylor-Molitch loves about the neighborhood she has lived in for the past 30 years. She's the director and founder of Historic Madison Park.

"It's similar to Carmel, where you've got the confluence of being right at the water, with beautiful vistas across the lake toward Cascade mountains, and being just a few miles from downtown but feeling totally in the neighborhood," she said. "And you can walk to everything, to shops and restaurants."

Like in Carmel, Calif., home prices have skyrocketed. It's easy to pay a million dollars for a little bungalow.

"The homes are not fabulous homes," said Taylor-Molitch. "They were built in '20s, '30s and '40s. They're not anything you'd conceive of as a million-dollar home. You drive by and say that's a cottage. It needs lots of work and the kitchen's old."

And like Carmel, Madison Park has its famous residents who can be anonymous in their own town -- people like actor Tom Skerritt, former Gov. Al Rosellini and Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz, among others. Taylor-Molitch recalled coming out of Cactus Restaurant in Madison Park one evening recently and noticing a big line of people waiting to get in. Among them was Bill Gates.

"You know, at Cactus, even Bill Gates waits in line," she said. "Nobody even noticed him."

At the same time, Madison Park is such an established neighborhood, with family businesses that have been operating for decades, that proprietors know their customers and neighbors know their neighbors.

"You can go to the corner grocery store or hardware store and put something on your account," she said. "It's difficult for me to walk down the street without raising my hand to about 10 people I know. There a sense of comfort these days in knowing who your neighbors are."

If you want to know what's really going on in Madison Park, stop by the Madison Park Hardware Store. That's where you'll find owner Lola McKee, who runs the shop with her kids and, at 82, still works six days as week.

If you want to rent something or find a nanny or a house cleaner, check out the bulletin board at the hardware store. When McKee is on vacation and the store is closed, she allows people to post their notices on the front door of the store.

"The front door gets covered with notices," said Taylor-Molitch. "It's a small-town kind of thing."

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